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Caleb has become my tricky little gnome. I know, I shouldn't call my infant son a gnome, but he's such a compact little package that it's amusing. Or we could start calling him a hobbit, you see when I discovered that one of his many medications was causing him hair growth on his legs Tom shockingly proclaimed, "you gave birth to a hobbit!". The crazy mess of hair on this kid doesn't do much to dissuade you from the argument either.
Anyway, my tricky little gnome/hobbit managed Sunday evening to pull out his NG tube. There we were feeding him his bottle through the tubing when he sneakily slipped one tiny little finger under the tube and yanked. He didn't even squeal. I turned to see milk dripping all over Tom (who was holding him) and it seriously took my brain about three seconds to register what had happened.
There is nothing like sitting in the ER on a Sunday evening to have a NG tube reinserted for your baby. As usual Caleb has quite the charm in winning over the nurses with his cooing and giggling. It seriously makes you feel like crap when he hates you after the tube has been reinserted.
So Monday morning, we're home from the ER. Phone rings. Cyndee answers, I overhear her conversation with the ER rep following up for our last night visit. "Oh yes, everything is fine, he hasn't pulled his tube out again and everything is great..."
I head upstairs to check on Caleb in the crib sleeping. There he is, sound asleep with his tubing pulled out once again. Why??!?!
We are quite lucky though, we have a home nurse who comes Monday, Wednesday and Friday to check on Caleb. This way we don't have to head into the doctor's so often. She checks his weight, his breathing, his tube placement, and so forth. Well, Tanda (home nurse) was due to come at noon, so we decided to let her put the tubing in instead of making any inconvenient ER trips.
So there is Tanda, and she wants to teach me how to put in this NG tube to my beautiful smiling baby boy who is cooing at me. What???!! Yeah, so I decide to stop being a wimp and learn the trade, right? I mean I might as well suck it up and do it. So there I am, staring at the cutest little nose in the world and attempting to jab a long tub up into and down into his stomach.
Well...I failed. Not too shocking. As soon as I ran into any resistance I freaked out. Tanda took over and finished the job. I'm hoping that next time I might be a little less queasy about the whole thing and manage better.
On a good note, NG tubes really do work. He has reached the eleven pound marker. Woohoo!
On a bad note, he has been really sick. He has terrible congestion, which doesn't help with a nose tube, a bad cough and this morning he started running a fever and puking. So stressful. I'm waiting for the doctor to call me back for a plan of action.

He had a Bad Day

So much to catch up on.

Monday we saw Dr. Mooradian (Caleb's cardiologist). He determined Caleb to be way too small to undergo heart surgery on Wednesday, so he proposed postponing the surgery for 2-4 months.

Okay...I mean if your doctor is telling you he doesn't feel good about your child having heart surgery and saying things like, "let's give him a better chance with more weight on him" and stuff like that, you're going to agree.

So we did.
Surgery postponed.

Our new job is to fatten him up like a Thanksgiving turkey, the doctor's words once again. So on Friday we visited Dr. Boonstra (Caleb's pediatrician) and he set us up with the NG Tube.

My poor baby was quite upset.

After screaming and kicking and sobbing, he slept. And slept. And slept.

Grandma Cyndee has been our life safer. She spends a lot of time with Caleb getting him to eat. We try to feed him with the bottle first and get him to drink as much as possible. After a while he refuses.

So this is how we feed him.

Cutest boy in the world!

He's adjusting great to the tubing and hasn't pulled it out yet (finger's crossed!). We get a lot of interesting looks and double takes when we go out with him. And of course it's so sad to see him like this, but hopefully it won't be in for long. Hopefully our little man will decide to eat on his own!

Magical Talin

I asked Talin to hold a fussy Caleb while I vacuumed last night. By the time I was done he had managed to get Caleb to fall asleep by rubbing his face. So cute and sweet.
(And yes, this is what the summer attire looks like in our home, I don't pick out the outfits!)
And doesn't Caleb look chubby? He's putting on the rolls!